selfish man does it on compulsion. That is like plucking fruit
when it is unripe; you have to tear it from the tree and bruise
the branch. But when a man loves, giving becomes a matter of joy
to him, like the tree's surrender of the ripe fruit. All our
belongings assume a weight by the ceaseless gravitation of our
selfish desires; we cannot easily cast them away from us. They
seem to belong to our very nature, to stick to us as a second
skin, and we bleed as we detach them. But when we are possessed
by love, its force acts in the opposite direction. The things
that closely adhered to us lose their adhesion and weight, and we
find that they are not of us. Far from being a loss to give them
away, we find in that the fulfilment of our being.
Thus we find in perfect love the freedom of our self. That only
which is done for love is done freely, however much pain it may
cause. Therefore working for love is freedom in action. This is
the meaning of the teaching of disinterested work in the _Gīta_.
The _Gīta_ says action we must have, for only in action do we
manifest our nature. But this manifestation is not perfect so
long as our action is not free. In fact, our nature is obscured
by work done by the compulsion of want or fear. The mother
reveals herself in the service of her children, so our true
freedom is not the freedom _from_ action but freedom _in_ action,
which can only be attained in the work of love.
God's manifestation is in his work of creation and it is said in
the Upanishad, _Knowledge, power, and action are of his nature_
[Footnote: "Svābhāvikī jnāna bala kriyācha."]; they are not
imposed upon him from outside. Therefore his work is his
freedom, and in his creation he realises himself. The same thing
is said elsewhere in other words: _From joy does spring all this
creation, by joy is it maintained, towards joy does it progress,
and into joy does it enter_. [Footnote: Ānandādhyēva khalvimāni
bhūtāni jāyantē, ānandēna jātāni jīvanti,
ānandamprayantyabhisamviçanti.] It means that God's creation has
not its source in any necessity; it comes from his fullness of
joy; it is his love that creates, therefore in creation is his
own revealment.
The artist who has a joy in the fullness of his artistic idea
objectifies it and thus gains it more fully by holding it afar.
It is joy which detaches ourselves from us, and then gives it
form in creations of love in order to make it more perfectly our
own. Hence there must be this separation, not a separation of
repulsion but a separation of love. Repulsion has only the one
element, the element of severance. But love has two, the element
of severance, which is only an appearance, and the element of
union which is the ultimate truth. Just as when the father
tosses his child up from his arms it has the appearance of
rejection but its truth is quite the reverse.
So we must know that the meaning of our self is not to be found
in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless
realisation of _yoga_, of union; not on the side of the canvas
where it is blank, but on the side where the picture is being
painted.
This is the reason why the separateness of our self has been
described by our philosophers as _māyā_, as an illusion, because
it has no intrinsic reality of its own. It looks perilous; it
raises its isolation to a giddy height and casts a black shadow
upon the fair face of existence; from the outside it has an
aspect of a sudden disruption, rebellious and destructive; it is
proud, domineering and wayward; it is ready to rob the world of
all its wealth to gratify its craving of a moment; to pluck with
a reckless, cruel hand all the plumes from the divine bird of
beauty to deck its ugliness for a day; indeed man's legend has it
that it bears the black mark of disobedience stamped on its
forehead for ever; but still all this _māyā_, envelopment of
_avidyā_; it is the mist, it is not the sun; it is the black
smoke that presages the fire of love.
Imagine some savage who, in his ignorance, thinks that it is the
paper of the banknote that has the magic, by virtue of which the
possessor of it gets all he wants. He piles up the papers, hides
them, handles them in all sorts of absurd ways, and then at last,
wearied by his efforts, comes to the sad conclusion that they are
absolutely worthless, only fit to be thrown into the fire. But
the wise man knows that the paper of the banknote is all _māyā_,
and until it is given up to the bank it is futile. It is only
_avidyā_, our ignorance, that makes us believe that the
separateness of our self like the paper of the banknote is
precious in itself, and by acting on this belief our self is
rendered valueless. It is only when the _avidyā_ is removed that
this very self comes to us with a wealth which is priceless. For
_He manifests Himself in forms which His joy assumes_. [Footnote:
Ānandarūpamamritam yadvibhāti.] These forms are separate from
Him, and the value that these forms have is only what his joy has
imparted to them. When we transfer back these forms into that
original joy, which is love, then we cash them in the bank and we
find their truth.
When pure necessity drives man to his work it takes an accidental
and contingent character, it becomes a mere makeshift
arrangement; it is deserted and left in ruins when necessity
changes its course. But when his work is the outcome of joy, the
forms that it takes have the elements of immortality. The
immortal in man imparts to it its own quality of permanence.
Our self, as a form of God's joy, is deathless. For his joy is
_amritham_, eternal. This it is in us which makes us sceptical of
death, even when the fact of death cannot be doubted. In
reconcilement of this contradiction in us we come to the truth that
in the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. We know that
the life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite
in its principle, must go through the portals of death in its
journey to realise the infinite. It is death which is monistic, it
has no life in it. But life is dualistic; it has an appearance as
well as truth; and death is that appearance, that _māyā_, which is
an inseparable companion to life. Our self to live must go through
a continual change and growth of form, which may be termed a
continual death and a continual life going on at the same time. It
is really courting death when we refuse to accept death; when we
wish to give the form of the self some fixed changelessness; when
the self feels no impulse which urges it to grow out of itself;
when it treats its limits as final and acts accordingly. Then comes
our teacher's call to die to this death; not a call to annihilation
but to eternal life. It is the extinction of the lamp in the
morning light; not the abolition of the sun. It is really asking us
consciously to give effect to the innermost wish that we have in the
depths of our nature.
We have a dual set of desires in our being, which it should be
our endeavour to bring into a harmony. In the region of our
physical nature we have one set of which we are conscious always.
We wish to enjoy our food and drink, we hanker after bodily
pleasure and comfort. These desires are self-centered; they are
solely concerned with their respective impulses. The wishes of
our palate often run counter to what our stomach can allow.
But we have another set, which is the desire of our physical
system as a whole, of which we are usually unconscious. It is
the wish for health. This is always doing its work, mending and
repairing, making new adjustments in cases of accident, and
skilfully restoring the balance wherever disturbed. It has no
concern with the fulfilment of our immediate bodily desires, but
it goes beyond the present time. It is the principle of our
physical wholeness, it links our life with its past and its
future and maintains the unity of its parts. He who is wise
knows it, and makes his other physical wishes harmonise with it.
We have a greater body which is the social body. Society is an
organism, of which we as parts have our individual wishes. We
want our own pleasure and license. We want to pay less and gain
more than anybody else. This causes scramblings and fights. But
there is that other wish in us which does its work in the depths
of the social being. It is the wish for the welfare of the
society. It transcends the limits of the present and the
personal. It is on the side of the infinite.
He who is wise tries to harmonise the wishes that seek for
self-gratification with the wish for the social good, and only thus
can he realise his higher self.
In its finite aspect the self is conscious of its separateness,
and there it is ruthless in its attempt to have more distinction
than all others. But in its infinite aspect its wish is to gain
that harmony which leads to its perfection and not its mere
aggrandisement.
The emancipation of our physical nature is in attaining health,
of our social being in attaining goodness, and of our self in
attaining love. This last is what Buddha describes as
extinction--the extinction of selfishness--which is the function
of love, and which does not lead to darkness but to illumination.
This is the attainment of _bodhi_, or the true awakening; it is
the revealing in us of the infinite joy by the light of love.
The passage of our self is through its selfhood, which is
independent, to its attainment of soul, which is harmonious.
This harmony can never be reached through compulsion. So our
will, in the history of its growth, must come through
independence and rebellion to the ultimate completion. We must
have the possibility of the negative form of freedom, which is
licence, before we can attain the positive freedom, which is
love.
This negative freedom, the freedom of self-will, can turn its
back upon its highest realisation, but it cannot cut itself away
from it altogether, for then it will lose its own meaning. Our
self-will has freedom up to a certain extent; it can know what it
is to break away from the path, but it cannot continue in that
direction indefinitely. For we are finite on our negative side.
We must come to an end in our evil doing, in our career of
discord. For evil is not infinite, and discord cannot be an end
in itself. Our will has freedom in order that it may find out
that its true course is towards goodness and love. For goodness
and love are infinite, and only in the infinite is the perfect
realisation of freedom possible. So our will can be free not
towards the limitations of our self, not where it is _māyā_ and
negation, but towards the unlimited, where is truth and love.
Our freedom cannot go against its own principle of freedom and
yet be free; it cannot commit suicide and yet live. We cannot
say that we should have infinite freedom to fetter ourselves, for
the fettering ends the freedom.
So in the freedom of our will, we have the same dualism of
appearance and truth--our self-will is only the appearance of
freedom and love is the truth. When we try to make this
appearance independent of truth, then our attempt brings misery
and proves its own futility in the end. Everything has this
dualism of _māyā_ and _satyam_, appearance and truth. Words are
_māyā_ where they are merely sounds and finite, they are _satyam_
where they are ideas and infinite. Our self is _māyā_ where it
is merely individual and finite, where it considers its
separateness as absolute; it is _satyam_ where it recognises its
essence in the universal and infinite, in the supreme self, in
_paramātman_. This is what Christ means when he says, "Before
Abraham was I am." This is the eternal _I am_ that speaks
through the _I am_ that is in me. The individual _I am_ attains
its perfect end when it realises its freedom of harmony in the
infinite _I am_. Then is it _mukti_, its deliverance from the
thraldom of _māyā_, of appearance, which springs from _avidyā_,
from ignorance; its emancipation in _çāntam çivam advaitam_, in
the perfect repose in truth, in the perfect activity in goodness,
and in the perfect union in love.
Not only in our self but also in nature is there this
separateness from God, which has been described as _māyā_ by our
philosophers, because the separateness does not exist by itself,
it does not limit God's infinity from outside. It is his own
will that has imposed limits to itself, just as the chess-player
restricts his will with regard to the moving of the chessmen.
The player willingly enters into definite relations with each
particular piece and realises the joy of his power by these very
restrictions. It is not that he cannot move the chessmen just as
he pleases, but if he does so then there can be no play. If God
assumes his rôle of omnipotence, then his creation is at an end
and his power loses all its meaning. For power to be a power must
act within limits. God's water must be water, his earth can never
be other than earth. The law that has made them water and earth
is his own law by which he has separated the play from the player,
for therein the joy of the player consists.
As by the limits of law nature is separated from God, so it is
the limits of its egoism which separates the self from him. He
has willingly set limits to his will, and has given us mastery
over the little world of our own. It is like a father's settling
upon his son some allowance within the limit of which he is free
to do what he likes. Though it remains a portion of the father's
own property, yet he frees it from the operation of his own will.
The reason of it is that the will, which is love's will and
therefore free, can have its joy only in a union with another
free will. The tyrant who must have slaves looks upon them as
instruments of his purpose. It is the consciousness of his own
necessity which makes him crush the will out of them, to make his
self-interest absolutely secure. This self-interest cannot brook
the least freedom in others, because it is not itself free. The
tyrant is really dependent on his slaves, and therefore he tries
to make them completely useful by making them subservient to his
own will. But a lover must have two wills for the realisation of
his love, because the consummation of love is in harmony, the
harmony between freedom and freedom. So God's love from which
our self has taken form has made it separate from God; and it is
God's love which again establishes a reconciliation and unites
God with our self through the separation. That is why our self
has to go through endless renewals. For in its career of
separateness it cannot go on for ever. Separateness is the
finitude where it finds its barriers to come back again and again
to its infinite source. Our self has ceaselessly to cast off its
age, repeatedly shed its limits in oblivion and death, in order
to realise its immortal youth. Its personality must merge in the
universal time after time, in fact pass through it every moment,
ever to refresh its individual life. It must follow the eternal
rhythm and touch the fundamental unity at every step, and thus
maintain its separation balanced in beauty and strength.
The play of life and death we see everywhere--this transmutation
of the old into the new. The day comes to us every morning,
naked and white, fresh as a flower. But we know it is old. It
is age itself. It is that very ancient day which took up the
newborn earth in its arms, covered it with its white mantle of
light, and sent it forth on its pilgrimage among the stars.
Yet its feet are untired and its eyes undimmed. It carries the
golden amulet of ageless eternity, at whose touch all wrinkles
vanish from the forehead of creation. In the very core of the
world's heart stands immortal youth. Death and decay cast over
its face momentary shadows and pass on; they leave no marks of
their steps--and truth remains fresh and young.
This old, old day of our earth is born again and again every
morning. It comes back to the original refrain of its music. If
its march were the march of an infinite straight line, if it had
not the awful pause of its plunge in the abysmal darkness and its
repeated rebirth in the life of the endless beginning, then it
would gradually soil and bury truth with its dust and spread
ceaseless aching over the earth under its heavy tread. Then
every moment would leave its load of weariness behind, and
decrepitude would reign supreme on its throne of eternal dirt.
But every morning the day is reborn among the newly-blossomed
flowers with the same message retold and the same assurance
renewed that death eternally dies, that the waves of turmoil are
on the surface, and that the sea of tranquillity is fathomless.
The curtain of night is drawn aside and truth emerges without a
speck of dust on its garment, without a furrow of age on its
lineaments.
We see that he who is before everything else is the same to-day.
Every note of the song of creation comes fresh from his voice.
The universe is not a mere echo, reverberating from sky to sky,
like a homeless wanderer--the echo of an old song sung once for
all in the dim beginning of things and then left orphaned. Every
moment it comes from the heart of the master, it is breathed in
his breath.
And that is the reason why it overspreads the sky like a thought
taking shape in a poem, and never has to break into pieces with
the burden of its own accumulating weight. Hence the surprise of
endless variations, the advent of the unaccountable, the
ceaseless procession of individuals, each of whom is without a
parallel in creation. As at the first so to the last, the
beginning never ends--the world is ever old and ever new.
It is for our self to know that it must be born anew every moment
of its life. It must break through all illusions that encase it
in their crust to make it appear old, burdening it with death.
For life is immortal youthfulness, and it hates age that tries to
clog its movements--age that belongs not to life in truth, but
follows it as the shadow follows the lamp.
Our life, like a river, strikes its banks not to find itself
closed in by them, but to realise anew every moment that it has
its unending opening towards the sea. It is a poem that strikes
its metre at every step not to be silenced by its rigid
regulations, but to give expression every moment to the inner
freedom of its harmony.
The boundary walls of our individuality thrust us back within our
limits, on the one hand, and thus lead us, on the other, to the
unlimited. Only when we try to make these limits infinite are we
launched into an impossible contradiction and court miserable
failure.
This is the cause which leads to the great revolutions in human
history. Whenever the part, spurning the whole, tries to run a
separate course of its own, the great pull of the all gives it a
violent wrench, stops it suddenly, and brings it to the dust.
Whenever the individual tries to dam the ever-flowing current of
the world-force and imprison it within the area of his particular
use, it brings on disaster. However powerful a king may be, he
cannot raise his standard or rebellion against the infinite
source of strength, which is unity, and yet remain powerful.
It has been said, _By unrighteousness men prosper, gain what they
desire, and triumph over their enemies, but at the end they are
cut off at the root and suffer extinction._ [Footnote:
Adharmēnaidhatē tāvat tatō bahdrāņi paçyati tatah sapatnān jayati
samūlastu vinaçyati.] Our roots must go deep down into the
universal if we would attain the greatness of personality.
It is the end of our self to seek that union. It must bend its
head low in love and meekness and take its stand where great and
small all meet. It has to gain by its loss and rise by its
surrender. His games would be a horror to the child if he could
not come back to his mother, and our pride of personality will be
a curse to us if we cannot give it up in love. We must know that
it is only the revelation of the Infinite which is endlessly new
and eternally beautiful in us, and which gives the only meaning
to our self.
V
REALISATION IN LOVE
We come now to the eternal problem of co-existence of the
infinite and the finite, of the supreme being and our soul.
There is a sublime paradox that lies at the root of existence.
We never can go round it, because we never can stand outside the
problem and weigh it against any other possible alternative. But
the problem exists in logic only; in reality it does not offer us
any difficulty at all. Logically speaking, the distance between
two points, however near, may be said to be infinite because it
is infinitely divisible. But we _do_ cross the infinite at every
step, and meet the eternal in every second. Therefore some of our
philosophers say there is no such thing as finitude; it is but a
_māyā_, an illusion. The real is the infinite, and it is only
_māyā_, the unreality, which causes the appearance of the finite.
But the word _māyā_ is a mere name, it is no explanation. It is
merely saying that with truth there is this appearance which is
the opposite of truth; but how they come to exist at one and the
same time is incomprehensible.
We have what we call in Sanskrit _dvandva_, a series of opposites
in creation; such as, the positive pole and the negative, the
centripetal force and the centrifugal, attraction and repulsion.
These are also mere names, they are no explanations. They are
only different ways of asserting that the world in its essence is
a reconciliation of pairs of opposing forces. These forces, like
the left and the right hands of the creator, are acting in
absolute harmony, yet acting from opposite directions.
There is a bond of harmony between our two eyes, which makes them
act in unison. Likewise there is an unbreakable continuity of
relation in the physical world between heat and cold, light and
darkness, motion and rest, as between the bass and treble notes
of a piano. That is why these opposites do not bring confusion
in the universe, but harmony. If creation were but a chaos, we
should have to imagine the two opposing principles as trying to
get the better of each other. But the universe is not under
martial law, arbitrary and provisional. Here we find no force
which can run amok, or go on indefinitely in its wild road, like
an exiled outlaw, breaking all harmony with its surroundings;
each force, on the contrary, has to come back in a curved line to
its equilibrium. Waves rise, each to its individual height in a
seeming attitude of unrelenting competition, but only up to a
certain point; and thus we know of the great repose of the sea to
which they are all related, and to which they must all return in
a rhythm which is marvellously beautiful.
In fact, these undulations and vibrations, these risings and
fallings, are not due to the erratic contortions of disparate
bodies, they are a rhythmic dance. Rhythm never can be born of
the haphazard struggle of combat. Its underlying principle must
be unity, not opposition.
This principle of unity is the mystery of all mysteries. The
existence of a duality at once raises a question in our minds,
and we seek its solution in the One. When at last we find a
relation between these two, and thereby see them as one in
essence, we feel that we have come to the truth. And then we
give utterance to this most startling of all paradoxes, that the
One appears as many, that the appearance is the opposite of truth
and yet is inseparably related to it.
Curiously enough, there are men who lose that feeling of mystery,
which is at the root of all our delights, when they discover the
uniformity of law among the diversity of nature. As if
gravitation is not more of a mystery than the fall of an apple,
as if the evolution from one scale of being to the other is not
something which is even more shy of explanation than a succession
of creations. The trouble is that we very often stop at such a
law as if it were the final end of our search, and then we find
that it does not even begin to emancipate our spirit. It only
gives satisfaction to our intellect, and as it does not appeal to
our whole being it only deadens in us the sense of the infinite.
A great poem, when analysed, is a set of detached sounds. The
reader who finds out the meaning, which is the inner medium that
connects these outer sounds, discovers a perfect law all through,
which is never violated in the least; the law of the evolution of
ideas, the law of the music and the form.
But law in itself is a limit. It only shows that whatever is can
never be otherwise. When a man is exclusively occupied with the
search for the links of causality, his mind succumbs to the
tyranny of law in escaping from the tyranny of facts. In
learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of
words we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point,
and only concern ourselves with the marvels of the formation of a
language, seeking the hidden reason of all its apparent caprices,
we do not reach the end--for grammar is not literature, prosody
is not a poem.